Well it's been about five weeks and I just want to document how things are going and what life is like for us these days.
I'm going to be honest. The first three weeks were so very hard. We came home from the hospital and things seemed to be going great with Carter. We would lay him down and poof he would go to sleep. We thought that we had won the lottery and that we were going to have a great sleeper on our hands. Well I guess he was just giving us a few days of peace before he piped up! Ha!
He was all over the place with sleep/eating etc. He was looking like he was in pain a lot. Not sure if it was gas or reflux or just adjusting to life outside the womb. We were at the doctors office two or three times and we went through FOUR different formulas. We started with what the hospital sent us home with. Then we tried Gentle Ease from Enfamil. He was still spitting up and acting as though he was in pain. They switched us to Enfamil AR. This seemed to be working the best but he was still acting unhappy and in pain. From there we were switched to Nutramigen and prescribed Zantac. This was kind of "the last option". Well it worked great the first couple of days and then Carter started having diarrhea. Apparently this is a side effect of this formula. One step forward, two steps back. We called the peds and they said to keep him on it for 10 days and if we weren't happy to switch back. Well we made the decision to switch him back to GentleEase and continue the Zantac and add rice to his formula (the peds said we could do this before I get any backlash of starting rice early). We would have never done this with the first baby, we would have left him on it until the 10th day. This time we listened to our instincts and glad we did. He still has tons of spit up, but doesn't seem "in pain" except occasionally. We've decided to wait it out.
Right now we are waking Carter every three hours during the day. He is so HUNGRY all the time. Sometimes it's hard to get him to three hours. It was also hard to figure out how much he is supposed to eat especially with the spit up. Are we feeding him too much? Not enough? etc. Right now (at 5 weeks, 6 Days old) he is eating 4 ounces of formula with 2tsp of rice and gas drops in each bottle. For now this is working.
I try and do the eat, play, sleep with him. It's hard. Babies don't come with instruction booklets. Sometimes he sleeps and then wants to sleep right after a bottle. Doesn't he know he's supposed to play now! I've started now just going with the flow and doing my best.
These were taken in the first few weeks. He looks so different now.
A "typical" day for Carter and I right now is kind of boring, but I'm enjoying. I watch Army Wives when he is sleeping. We got a subscription to Netflix before I went on maternity leave. Best decision ever (or not). I have always wanted to watch Scandal, so I watched the first two seasons. Dying to see season three! Now I'm watching Army Wives. OMG Amazing. Love it! I also try to do something productive each day. I've cleaned a closet out, cleaned out our freezer, etc. We do a ton of laundry, vacuum, and wash and clean bottles and make bottles. I think I could make bottles in my sleep.
He is sleeping in this amazing sleeper I found through another blog.
We had started him off in a bassinet, but with his reflux and spitting up it wasn't working. We tried a wedge to elevate him but that wasn't great either. He would wiggle his way down and wake himself up. The reviews were amazing on this and said their kids slept so good in it (for like HOURS). Well he will go about 3 hours and we will take it! Praise!!
He has started to giggle lately and it melts my heart. We have good days and we have days that make you want to open a bottle of wine at 10am. Ha!
With Garrett I wanted to go back to work by 8 weeks. I just couldn't figure it out and needed to go back to work. For the first 3.5 weeks I felt the same with Carter. This past week though we have started having a good time. I am truly going to miss being with him daily. We are so fortunate to have an amazing daycare and I love his teacher. Ms. Connie was Garrett's teacher and helped us so much! She is incredible! I feel so confident leaving Carter with her. It will be an adjustment for sure.
This week I plan on doing a one month update this week. As part of the pregnancy study I did Carter is now in a study as well. He had an EKG done, a heart ultrasound and an MRI this week. They hope to repeat again at 6 months and a year. The study could go further than that, but they are just in the beginning stages right now.
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